


Zvyezda

by tristesses



Category: Eastern Promises (2007)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-28 21:51:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/pseuds/tristesses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are stars and stars. Those on skin, those in the sky, and those found in the bottom of a vodka bottle. Drink enough, and they will start to merge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zvyezda

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on 6/22/2008.

The stars are blurred, silver pins in a sable sky. Nikolai is drunk; there’s just one coherent part of him – untouched by the morphine and vodka – that’s simultaneously lecturing him and keeping an eye on the alleyways around him. They are blank and empty, though, except for where he and Kirill are slumped against hard dark brick, across from the staring eye of a vacant doorway. Nikolai looks at the stars. They are the same stars that shone on him in Siberia, and that astounds him. The distance between his life in Russia and this cold London alley is immense, spatially and emotionally, but the stars shine regardless.

“What are you staring at?” Kirill slurs. Nikolai turns to face him, and finds the vodka bottle instead.

“The stars,” he replies, and takes a swig.

Kirill gives an ugly chuckle.

“The stars?” he asks. He leans toward Nikolai, stumbling alarmingly close, placing his hands just under Nikolai’s clavicle. “These stars are the only ones that matter for you, _malchik_. These are the only fucking stars you should be looking at.”

“How can I see them? They are below my neck,” Nikolai points out, sarcasm lacing his voice. “My eyes are still in my head, I cannot look there.”

Kirill is stroking his collarbone, making him shiver in the smallest of ways. But then he lurches away and begins to fumble with the buttons on his shirt, finally ripping them off and displaying his chest. The tattoos there are faded, bitterly black and grey. His stars are looking at Nikolai.

“See these?” says Kirill, exhilarated. “These are just like yours, look at them! Look at me!”

“You are not making sense, Kirill,” he says, and thumps into the wall as Kirill crumples against him.

“I know,” whispers Kirill. “I know, but you should understand me when I talk to you.” He veers onto another tangent, a sudden one, mumbling against Nikolai’s shirt. Nikolai takes his jaw and directs it skyward, the better to hear.

“I did not mean for these scars to happen,” Kirill says. “Believe me, Kolya.”

His hand shifts, slides against a slash in Nikolai’s flesh, still aching despite stitches and bandages. Nikolai hisses and thrusts him away. Kirill’s lips tighten; his mood changes, swift like cracking ice.

“But better you than me, da?” he says, patting his pockets, searching for cigarettes. “I am the king, you are the driver.” Nikolai does not miss the sneer aimed toward him, or the hunched shoulders radiating hurt.

“Da,” he says, softly. “I am driver.”

“You will get nowhere with ambition like that,” snaps Kirill. His cigarette glows, trailing smoke like a comet.

The bottle is empty; Nikolai lets it slips from his fingers. It shatters on the cobblestones, the glass glinting reflections of the sky.

“Ambition?” he asks. “What is your ambition, Kirill?” His tone is mocking, now. “Do you have one? Besides drinking, smoking, fucking.”

“Ha!” Kirill wavers closer. His eyes are angry. He smacks the wall with his hands and steps forward again, so close that Nikolai can smell the alcohol and tobacco on his breath, see the pores of his skin.

“You think I have no ambition?” He has trapped Nikolai in the circle of his arms.

“You think I do not want?” He is watching Nikolai with lazy, half-shut eyes, pressing close, muscles tense. Nikolai twists his head to the side, a sudden wave of sick expectancy sweeping over him.

“How the fuck would I know what you want?” he snarls. This is too intimate, now; this is almost uncomfortable. He masks it with hostility, but Kirill does not notice this time, or he refuses to notice. Instead, he lowers his head, mouth brushing mouth, lips touching lips, and Nikolai grits his teeth and forces himself to think of the game, how he will twist the king’s memory and manipulate his affections until finally, destroyed, he will fall to his knees and Nikolai can say –

“Checkmate,” whispers Kirill, and closes the little remaining space between them.

A kiss. It is a simple thing in most circumstances, but Kirill has complicated it, as he is so prone to doing. A kiss, an object not given freely, something too precious to be handed about like a cheap fuck or a bottle of liquor. This kiss, which should not be encouraged, not be leaned in to, not be deepened, as Nikolai is doing now. The rational sliver of his mind is too taken aback to shout at him now; this is something unexpected, and something too far gone (and far too pleasurable) to take back now.

The eye of the empty doorway is watching them, two men thrust against the wall, entangled, the whiteness of their grasping hands stark against the brick. Kirill has Nikolai’s wrist pinned to the wall; the grit will leave marks on his skin later, completemented by the bruising from Kirill's fingers, a layer of shame and lust atop the tattoos. His other hand is knotted in Kirill’s hair, pulling him closer and giving him pain. Nikolai is torn; he wants this to end but his body is playing traitor, and Kirill’s hands are skilled and careful, tracing designs on his stomach, his back, following the pathways of tattoos, running nails along his hipbones.

A moment, a movement, and the comforting body in front of him is gone; a chill rushes over him, the London cold seeping into his skin, making him shiver, or perhaps that’s Kirill, on his knees at Nikolai’s feet, lips on the flat plane of his stomach, hands undoing his trousers and touching him oh so delightfully and it makes Nikolai feel _dirty_ , a feeling he’s unaccustomed to and something that he will not be able to wash off.

“Kolya,” whispers Kirill, and his mouth is on Nikolai and his fingers are stroking Nikolai’s hips, thighs, ass, and when Nikolai moans (quite accidental, he will assure himself later) Kirill laughs. The vibrations make Nikolai grab his hair in a fist, yanking harder than he should, then relax and cup the base of Kirill’s skull. In his head he is shrieking – he is allowing himself to be sucked off by a man, in the streets, and not just any man, but _Kirill_ , his captain, this will irrevocably damage his game plan, this is not how the night was to proceed – but there is no one else in sight and who is he to deny himself pleasure, when there is no one to be hurt but himself and his –

Nikolai's brain stutters on the word lover, for that is inappropriate for this scene. Kirill can sense his mind is drifting, perhaps, for he rakes his nails down Nikolai’s thighs and makes the other man hiss with his deft tongue, joined by calloused fingers that know exactly what to do. One probes further back, wet with saliva, and ventures places Nikolai has never even considered before. Then the mouth is gone, and Nikolai almost cries out at the sensation of his tender skin against Kirill’s shoulder; there’s a starflare of pain, Kirill’s teeth in his abdomen, fingers pressing on delicate spots inside, and Nikolai spasms, clenching his fists in Kirill’s hair. His mouth is slightly open, eyes squeezed shut; the only things he sees are stars.

When they are gone, he opens his eyes, licks his lips, and tries to organize his thoughts. In his peripheral vision he sees Kirill, touching the sticky smear on his chest and shoulders with something bordering on reverence. Nikolai tilts his head to the wall and breathes slowly, deeply, controlling himself; he is shaking, though, and can’t stop that, not in the moist cool air of London. It’s biting through his skin and paralyzing his nerves. He can’t even move his hands to tuck himself in, button his trousers, clean himself up.

His thoughts are whirring; even through his drunken haze his cold, rational self is cataloguing the event, studying it, fitting it into categories of secrets and blackmail. This will be useful, he thinks. Later in the game, this will be a weapon. Does he feel a twinge of regret? Perhaps. But most likely not. Lust is lust, and it is over, and the game continues. It stops for no one.

Nikolai looks down at Kirill, who is touching himself, kneeling and slouched over as if in prayer. His free hand is mere centimeters away from Nikolai’s foot, fingers flexing, scratching at the asphalt. A king on his knees, kneeling to Nikolai. It has a ring to it, he thinks.

At his feet, Kirill whimpers and shudders and slumps further, touching his forehead to the ground. Nikolai looks up at the stars. They glimmer back, cold globes of fire burning trillions of miles away. They are as dead as the tattoos on his flesh.


End file.
